CCNA State Teams Gather in Oregon to Share Innovations in Nursing Education
Oct 21, 2009 | CCNA in the News
CCNA State Teams Gather in Oregon to Share Innovations in Nursing Education
Across the U.S., a looming shortage of nurses continues to threaten the quality and safety of health care for Americans. On October 21, 2009, in Portland, the Center to Champion Nursing in America and the Oregon Consortium for Nursing Education (OCNE) welcomes leaders from 11 states gathered to demonstrate ways to increase the number of Bachelors of Science in Nursing–or BSN-prepared–nurses, who are more likely to go on to receive master’s or doctoral degrees, the degrees required to become nursing faculty.
Major factors contributing to the shortage of nurses include an education system plagued by too few faculty to teach new students and a lack of consistency between university and community college curricula. In addition, there is an urgent need to reform nursing education to reflect the realities of the 21st century, including a rapidly aging population and a changing health care system.
OCNE has launched a groundbreaking program to increase the number of BSN-prepared nurses. Through unprecedented collaborations in Oregon, nursing faculty from Associate Degree and Baccalaureate Nursing Programs have agreed to new nursing competencies, a shared curriculum, and academic standards, already resulting in a significant increase in the number of nurses pursuing bachelor’s degrees.
In addition to Oregon, teams from California, Hawaii, New York, and North Carolina will be serving as mentors to other attendees and sharing their approaches to education redesign. For instance, Hawaii will demonstrate how their statewide curriculum could enable Baccalaureate nurses to begin work after two years instead of four. Nursing leaders from North Carolina will explain their model where community colleges and universities share faculty in order to increase the number of students who can enroll in nursing school.
